During
a congressional hearing on Friday, Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) joked that "In Arizona sometimes to gain
office you have to have shot someone." Earlier this year, Franks' fellow
delegation member Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was shot in a mass shooting that
killed six.

REP. STEVE COHEN (D-TN): If you have a law in Arizona and they don't have that prohibition in Ohio the person in Ohio who comes to Arizona can have a gun when they couldn't have one in Arizona. I know in Arizona you have to have a gun.

FRANKS: In Arizona sometimes to gain office you have to have shot someone. I'm joking, of course. I hope that the media understands that.

Watch:

Franks' comment came while
the House Judiciary Committee was marking up the National
Right-To-Carry Reciprocity Act, which would force states with strong
restrictions on concealed carry permits to recognize permits issued by states
with weak restrictions.

During
the mark-up, Franks joined his GOP colleagues in voting down Democratic
amendments that would have prevented misdemeanant sex offenders, those on the
Terrorist Watch List, those with misdemeanor convictions for stalking, and
those who have been the subjects of domestic protection orders in the last ten
years from carrying guns legally outside their home states.

Franks has a long record of letting his rhetoric get him into trouble. Previously:

Franks responded to a question about the
possibility of a balanced budget amendment forcing judges into the federal
spending process by invoking the Nazis, who "said that the Jew was
'untermensch,' sub-human, and they took away their personhood" and stating that
judges could "try to intervene in this process" of budgeting the same way they
did in Nazi Germany.

Franks
cited abortion
to state
that "far more of the African American community is being devastated by the
policies of today than were being devastated by slavery."

Franks
claimed that President
Obama's administration has an "ideological commitment" to "weaken America."